Space Shack by Apple Dash

Have you ever tried to run out of a hostile space in a small space shack with your lazy, but inexplicably rich friend? Well, now's your chance! Survive long enough to reach Victory station, open deliveries for your friend or burn them to keep yourself afloat (I mean, it's not a boat, but I can't find a better word. And objects do technically float in space, so whatever). Keep your shield space from running out and your fuel tanks (as well as your friend's heart) full!

Features: - Highly animated cartoony art style; - Fast paced platforming action; - Jetpack! - Polish! - Cutscenes! - Stuff! - Excitement!
A few notes on technical issues, unrelated to the overly-excited marketing thingy above.
Web build has some framerate issues and audio bugs. They aren't enough to ruin the whole experience, but still, it's not ideal. Windows and Linux Builds are coming tomorrow (you aren't downloading them anyway itch has stats, I can see how pointless they are).
Also, it's using "Space" for flying around on a jetpack, so it's better to go full screen or you might experience some issues.
| Source Code | https://bitbucket.org/fshpsmgc/ld42/src/ |
| HTML5 (web) | https://fshpsmgc.itch.io/space-shack |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/space-shack |
Ratings
| Overall | 549th | 3.063⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 561th | 2.833⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 452th | 3.021⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 320th | 3.646⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 317th | 3.354⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 460th | 2.604⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 101th | 3.292⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 416th | 2.833⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 11🗳️ | 9🗨️ |
- SFX need to be better balanced, the volume level difference makes it hard to have the quite ones clear to hear and the loud ones to not be overwhelming.
- it wasn't clear that you needed to open some of the boxes to keep up the "friendship" at first.
- controls were a bit stiff/unresponsive and challenging to use.
- it was odd that the friend was just watching TV while the ship was being attacked... -- why should I as the player character care about the friendship level, given that the friend doesn't seem to care about the player character?
The controls are obviously very floaty, which I suppose is intentional, but it does make the game a bit frustrating. I wanted to stash the friends stuff in the lower right corner, but because of the slow movement that took to long to keep up with the fuel/shields. Perhaps it would be more fun if attacks came in waves, so that you wouldn't have to focus on three things at once. It was hard to notice when the fuel/shield/friend was low on health because the health bars were all the way in the corner. I think it would be better if the bars were over the objects themselves, and if there were some kind of notification when the object was low on health, so you can focus on it. Picking objects up was a bit fiddly because the prompt to pick it up showed up before you were close to picking it up. Also, you don't know which item(s) you are going to pick up before doing it. That could be solved by highlighting the object when it grabable.
I hope the feedback is useful for you. Overall it's a very complete and playable game, good job!
Also some of the text are hard to read cause they pass by so fast (maybe thats intended, for the atmosphere thou) and some start somewhere outside of the screen. (i use an 16x9 display)
I liked the mechanics and how you get random things out of the boxes (even got myself an refridgerator)
I feels like FTL engineer while play this game)
I have two issues with this game. Firstly, you need to be able to pick up the objects that come out of packages. I ended up dying because the fuel incinerator thingy was blocked by a shield generator and a lamp, and I couldn't get them out of the way properly. Secondly, the description says that you're trying to survive long enough to reach Victory station, but there doesn't seem to be any indication of how close or far away you are. If there is an indicator, it needs to be made more obvious.
This is great fun, though! Would like to play a more polished version of it.